1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunication systems, and in particular, to a communications system employing DTMF and pulse dialing.
2. Description of the Related Art
In modern interactive voice response (IVR) and voice mail systems, the preferred mechanism for user interaction from remote and sometimes local systems is via dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) recognition. However, in many parts of the world and even in North America, there remains a significant rotary or pulse dial base.
In order to accommodate both the installed DTMF and rotary dial bases, IVR systems provide an option for callers to either stay on the line ("if you have a rotary phone") or to "press 1 now" ("if you have a Touch Tone phone"). Thus, current systems require the user to identify themselves, thereby tying up system resources while the system waits for the time-out that sends the rotary caller to a human operator. Touch tone callers must therefore go through a time-wasting step of listening to a message and pressing a digit just to identify themselves as touch tone callers. Rotary callers must often wait through an entire touch tone menu just to get service. Moreover, customer service companies often put elaborate menus in place to ensure that callers have tried an automated service before going to the more costly human service. Often, callers skip these menus by pretending to have rotary phones. While this is an advantage to the caller, the companies find that they have invested in a system but are receiving no benefits.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system for automatically identifying whether a caller has rotary or DTMF capabilities. There is a still further need for a system whereby line utilization is improved by removing a time-out condition from rotary callers.